016 — No, FOMO. Just, LOSE.

Hey. How's it going? This is Ryan Hefner, and this is the All Play Podcast. This week, I wanted to talk about well, not this week. This episode.

I have a feeling, actually, I'm gonna do a few episodes this week. Maybe make up for the fact that I didn't do one last week, but then at the same time, I posted 2 episodes the week before. So just gonna kinda play it out here. But, you know, I've been, I guess, since 2020. And, you know, I guess COVID and everything else, obviously, was working from home.

And since then, obviously, moved to Atlanta as well. And I'm just yeah. It's, it can be hard working alone. It can be a little bit hard working alone or working remote, especially in a new area where you don't really know anyone. And also, you know, I have a 4 year old and a 7 year old at home, and so my time is I don't really have a lot of time to, like, bump in and find the frictions of the world and meet people and or, you know, go to meetups.

And actually, this I'd say this last month or 2, I've really been thinking about just conferences. And I know Laracon is is, is actually happening tomorrow. Thankfully, they're actually gonna be live streaming, though. So I'll at least be able to sit in and act like I'm there, even though I'm not having the interactions. And that's kinda that's kinda where my mind started to go.

And obviously, I was like, you know, I don't really have, like, FOMO. I'm not like it's not like a fear of missing out. It's more of a a sort of thing about it. It's like a lot it's like loss of social, like, social interaction or engagement. And I was like, well, I guess it's I don't have FOMO.

I have lose, which is like lack of social engagement. And I mean, I have social engagement. I have a partner. I have kids. There's some people in the neighborhood who I, you know, will strike up a conversation with.

But when it comes to, you know, the things that I'm, like, really interested in, which is either, like, you know, music or skateboarding or surfing or which unfortunately, surfing is not really a thing that I'm engaging in right now, at least not living in Atlanta. But also, obviously, building, you know, and designing and just, like, thinking about products. And so, yeah, it's like it's just the lack of social engagement as far as, like, in the stuff that I'm interested in can be really tricky. But thankfully, this weekend, I am heading up to, upstate New York. I'm gonna be meeting up with a bunch of friends.

We do this annual trip out of my buddy's house up in Woodstock. And so I'm stoked on that. So I'm gonna be, like, gobbling up as much as that engagement as I can while I'm up there. But, I think for 2025, the one thing I really wanna try to focus on is just creating some margin in my life to where I can actually either go to these conferences or go to meetups or, I don't know, make make something happen maybe during the day, you know, while my kids are at school or something that I can do. You know, whether it's like go to, like, a coworking space, which I tow totally could do that right now.

I could go there's a pretty cool string of, like, co working spaces called switch yards here in Atlanta. I'm gonna go check those out at some point. I just also am a little bit spoiled, like, at home. I have the studio display. I got you know, it's just comfortable.

I can get a run-in and then immediately come back, shower, and start working. And that's what I like to do. But, I really just wanna create some margin. Like, the client stuff is great. It's good money, but at the same time, you know, if I'm not doing it, I'm not getting paid.

So, obviously, that's also some of my motivations for the personal projects is to try to offset that a little bit to create some of that margin so I can do some more of these things that opens up my social circles and opens up opportunities and all this other stuff. And, you know, I was even thinking today, it's like, man, why am really head down doing a client thing? I can't realize. It's not like I'm, like, looking at Twitter. You know?

I know I'm not even thinking about posting to Twitter. I have nothing of, like, personal stuff that I can even share at that moment just because my head is so in that stuff that even even just creating a little margin for that might just allow for some conversations to happen or just, you know, do the kind of exposure stuff that you need to do when you're working on your own stuff. So, I mean, this is I guess this episode is really just about communication as well as marketing, socializing, all these stuff on stuff I'm, you know, kind of wrestling with and trying to figure out. One of the things I am trying to do is I am going to start, doing that jam sessions thing over on Ripple FM. So I'm trying to figure out who are the first couple of people I'm going to be just jamming with and recording episodes and throwing them up there.

So if you're interested, reach out. We'd love to know what you're working on, and we can start, you know, start getting some stuff out there over on, over on Ripple on that jam sessions channel. And if it's something you wanna share more broadly, I think I like I said, in an earlier episode regarding jam sessions and stuff, I will also probably be doing, like, a more of the, fully open, not private, public, and all the podcatcher kind of, version of jam sessions as well. But just gonna leave it there. A little quick one.

Not necessarily FOMO, but definitely lack of social engagement that I'm feeling like I'm dealing with right now. And I'm gonna try and make the margins of my life so I can go out and go to some conferences or go to some meetups and, talk about the stuff that I'm interested in. You know? So I'm Ryan Heffner. Find me online at ryanhefner.com.

Find me on Twitter @ryanhefner. You can find the podcast at allplay.fm and on Twitter @allplayfm. Alright. Have a great one. Later.